


The god of love's purlieu

by Nedrika



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bad Psychiatry, Cannibalism, Delusions, Dubious Consent, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Murder, Murder Husbands, Oral Fixation, Oral Sex, Prompt Fill, The usual tags for S1 Will and Hannibal in general honestly, empathy as a superpower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 14:02:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20065213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nedrika/pseuds/Nedrika
Summary: Will talks over the details of a new and unnerving case with Dr Lecter, but there may be more to the case than was expected, and it may go beyond just talking over.





	The god of love's purlieu

**Author's Note:**

> Written in one sitting, and uploaded as a tiny celebration for surviving camp nano. 
> 
> The last word of my 40k was "throat"
> 
> From a prompt at the unabashedkink meme https://unabashedkink.dreamwidth.org/488.html#comments
> 
> Anon 1: Any crime drama/mystery/cop fandom: Our heroes are tracking a serial killer. Re-enacting the crime turns steamy.
> 
> Anon 2: Ah this would work really well for Hannibal, early season 1, when Will's still going through all of his cases with Hannibal. Of course, Hannibal has intimate knowledge of how the crime was committed... Possibly, he would even set it up with the goal of seducing Will in mind.

Will felt like he had been awake for weeks by the time he pushed open the door to Dr Lecter’s office. The scene yesterday had been too close to home, only a couple of hour’s drive away, and the lack of results from his consultation had given him a bad night’s rest and a feeling like someone had walked over his grave.

Hannibal was immaculate as always, smug and professional as he greeted Will from the other side of the door. He was sure that he had been on time for his appointment and wondered vaguely whether he waited for his patients as some sort of readiness signifier or had videos set up to tell him when someone arrived. Given what had happened in this room not so long ago it made sense for there to be precautions in place. 

“Will,” he started, voice smooth and preened as his neatly pressed suit. “As prompt as ever.” He gestured into the office with a sweep of his arms and stepped back to allow him room to pass.

He stalked to his seat, perching on the edge of the leather, nerves jolting through him as he watched Hannibal take his place opposite him and sink into the leather with a casual ease that he found himself envious of. The rich incense smell of the office wore at the edges of his frayed nerves, burrowing itself in his sinuses and making him want to sneeze.

“What would you like to talk about today, Will?” Hannibal said, steepling his fingers and levelling a patient stare at him. 

“They found someone up at Loganville in Pennsylvania yesterday, Jack had me go take a look at him.” It felt wrong to be talking about this one, something too personal in the setup, but he had come here to talk about it and Hannibal had made it not just his professional business to listen to him, so he let the details of it float to the top of his mind, ugly bubbles on the surface of a swamp. 

“He was someone that we were considering in the case I spoke to you about earlier, John Urquhart, but we couldn’t get him on anything solid and he wouldn’t tell us anything. It was… jarring, to see him laid out like that, and to think that it felt like justice for what he had done to those women.”

“Does it still feel like justice?”

“I find it difficult to say I would rather have him out on the streets free to do it again, but we should have been able to get him. I’m sure we would have got him eventually.”

“But would you have apprehended him in time?”

Will slumped a little, the question that had been haunting him since that disaster of an interrogation finally given voice.

“He would have backed down, stayed low until he was certain he had been passed over. He wasn’t reckless or stupid, and if we’d kept the pressure up long enough he would have buckled.”

“We both know that the resources of the Behavioural Analysis Unit are not limitless, and that sort of harassment is neither in Jack’s budget nor his schedule. He would have slipped past you and struck again, and you would have had to wait for a life to be extinguished to hope for more clues.”

He could see the cold logic in it, had felt that same triumphant logic when he had recognised the bloodless face lain out before him, but it still felt like it wasn’t what he was supposed to pull from the scene, a line in a stanza in the wrong rhyme scheme. 

“Even if that’s true, he didn’t need to be killed that way, by a vigilante,” he conceded, and Hannibal settled into the concession across from him, relaxing a fraction against the chair back.

“Is that who you think did it, Will? A vigilante, settling a score? I seem to remember the name coming up on that lurid website that Ms Lounds runs, they could have easily taken the law into their own hands.”

“It isn’t a vigilante,” he stated. It was one of the few things about this case that he felt completely sure in. “We were initially brought in because of the connection to the York case but it’s too… clean for a vigilante working out the passionate hatred of a revenge killing. Even if it wasn’t someone they knew and they’re acting out of some twisted social obligation it’s too precise. Jack thinks it is the Chesapeake Ripper again but some elements don’t fit that either, it’s too…” he slowed, trying to pinpoint what it was about the scene that was wrong. It had been elegant enough for the Ripper, and geographically it made sense, but the emotion was all wrong. “It’s too personal,” he concluded, the piece fitting nicely into the other conclusions he had made about the case. 

“Too impersonal to be a vigilante and too personal to be the Ripper?” Hannibal questioned. There was a touch of something in his eyes, but Will couldn’t make out whether it was curiosity or amusement. It could easily be both, and a momentary annoyance swept over him.

“It could be the Ripper, it has his style and technical skill, but there would have to have been a foundational shift in his motives. This had nothing to do with the victim, it is almost inconsequential outside of his loss being one easily accepted. He’s not being humiliated, nor is he being shown off as a work of art as some of his other victims are. Something is missing from the picture, I could feel it as I walked through the crime scene. It was as though there was a puppeteer I couldn’t focus on always at the edge of the scene, pulling pieces into place.”

“So two perpetrators?”

“Not that either, not quite. All the little flairs seem consistent with one thesis statement, but it’s not as though the killer was performing in front of a completely impassive audience or for the benefit of a higher power.”

Hannibal unlaced his fingers, traced one digit delicately along his lower lip.

“How did you conduct your mental reconstruction when you were in the room with the body, Will?”

He bristled at the question.

“I tried to anticipate what the killer was thinking and walk through the scene in his shoes, as I always do. There was nothing unusual in how I conducted myself, it’s that there’s something different in the crime, something I haven’t experienced before.”

Hannibal’s eyes sharpened as he leant forward. 

“Would you be able to replicate the process here with me from what you remember of the scene? Do you need to have the file with you to jog your memory?”

The half-smile insinuated that if Will said yes he would be able to conjure the crime scene photos from the air in order to maintain his image of the perfect host.

“It’s fine, I can remember the scene perfectly well without the… aids.” He had been thinking of little else than the fine details of the murder for hours straight.”I don’t see how trying again would be of any help, if I couldn’t manage to get my head around it while I was in the presence of the body I don’t see how your office will help. No offence.”

“None taken, of course. I’m simply suggesting that we try a different tack. If something was missing when you attempted to replicate the mind of the killer in this scenario, perhaps it would benefit you to act in the role of this shadowy puppet master instead?”

Will froze, trying the theory on for size in his head. He hadn’t tried it before, assuming that the most important character to focus on was the active participant rather than this vague lump in the middle of the scene, but it made sense. Either this second person was the real threat, and the crime had been undertaken for their benefit - which didn’t sit quite right with him either, off the bat - or they were an accessory that may know more of the situation and could lead them to the perpetrator. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to look at everything from a second perspective, and any sort of profile would be better than the nothing he had managed to deliver so far.

“Alright, Dr Lecter, assuming that it would be possible for me to inhabit this person, would you take the role of the gruesome murderer?” He relaxed back into the chair, lulled by the playful tone that had infiltrated Hannibal’s voice.

“I would do my best,” Hannibal replied with a spark like he had made the breakthrough in Will’s diagnosis. “I am certain that they cannot be so different from you or I; the best murderers are said to hide in plain sight, are they not?”

It was ridiculous that he was about to play pretend with his psychiatrist, but if he looked at it that way an awful lot of his life was spent in make-believe lands playing pretend. Except normally he was alone in his flights of fantasy, this time he would have to take along a passenger. 

“So then, Will, what does our crime scene look like?”

“It’s a quiet open concept kitchen-dining-living room, smaller than here, about half the size. Comfortably middle class. Urquhart lives alone and he keeps the place immaculate. There are no trophies that we can identify, and no evidence of the killers taking his trophies for their own, either. Walls are neutral white and there are some prints of characterless artworks on the walls rather than family photos and a rack of blockbuster DVDs in the corner next to his huge flatscreen. The whole thing lacks in personality but is functional, just like the owner. There’s a large dining table in the centre of the room, about the same area as your writing desk but higher.”

“And that’s where he is?”

“How could you tell?” Will relaxed a little more, crossing one leg over the other in an unconscious mirror of the doctor.

“I’ve been around you long enough to read your inflexions, Will. And the way you were describing the room showed a certain aversion. How was he found? Displayed I assume, given the assumption of the Ripper having anything to do with it?”

“Yeah, he, uh… he was on the table, it had been cleared with all the normal dressings neatly stacked by the side.”

Hannibal shifted to lean forward in his chair and interrupted him. “Would this be better as a re-enactment rather than a read through?”

“Uh, yes, probably.” Will stood awkwardly as Hannibal rose and started clearing the things from his desk, stacking them neatly at the side of the room as described. 

“He was lying along the length of it, as though it was a bier surrounded by candles, and he had a knife sticking out of a wound in his neck. Zeller said that it was a good cut for a clean death, but there hadn’t been sufficient force for it to be instantly lethal, only nicking the jugular and half- obstructing the oesophagus so he drowned as much as he bled out, but he didn’t struggle.”

“Anaesthesia?” Hannibal had circled to the opposite side of the table and had braced his arms against it, looking down as if seeing the body there. 

“Lobotomy.” It had been a lucky spot in amongst everything that had been going on, but the slight bruising around the eye would be confirmed soon enough. “Not a particularly finessed one, from the preliminary look over, more interested in keeping him quiet than solving anything.”

“Seems like an extreme length to go to just to stick a knife in his throat.”

“He was carved as well. Like a very particular roast, and the pieces of him were arranged along his body like hors d'oeuvres. All very intricately prepared, packaged into finger food and dotted along his body. He was missing pieces of his thigh, belly fat, and liver as far as we can tell, and made into tartare, stuffed tomatoes, sushi, probably a whole lot of other little things that you would have a much easier time recognising than I did.”

He risked a smile at Hannibal, who looked hungrily back.

“It seems a waste to prepare all that food and not eat it. I would, however, suggest that the setting is to replicate nantaimori rather than a funeral bier and that for such a reason the victim would have still been breathing when he was… decorated. Were the morsels resting on leaves?” 

Will took a step towards the table, pushing down the shock; of course, Hannibal would be the person to know about unusual culinary habits.

“Yes, date palm we think. He’d been shaved very recently as well.”

“It’s to keep the food sterile enough for consumption.”

“Is the -mori to do with death in this context?”

Hannibal laughed deep in the back of his throat.

“Not this time, it’s from the Japanese rather than the Latin this time. It’s considered an art, although the tradition has slipped a little in modernisation and westernisation. Was there anything left in the kitchen from all the preparation? Any sign of the struggle it must have taken to get the orbitoclast into position?”

“Nothing, it was completely wiped down and sterilised. Not a book out of place. Even the wounds for the excisions were stitched and glued back together with the surgical care typical of the Ripper.”

“Shame,” Hannibal said, although he seemed to be struggling to inject too much displeasure into his voice. “Still, it would have taken considerable time to set all of this up, both to undo the signs of the struggle if there was one and also to get him ready and the pieces prepared. Although seeing how the sausage is made does quite take the edge off of the display.” 

Hannibal smiled widely, and Will found himself smiling along at the pun despite himself. It felt like there was a chance of progress here at last.

“However, as I said there is little point to making a feast and then leaving it all to rot, especially one with such a high level of specificity. It rather defeats the purpose.” He pouted down at the table as though it had wronged him, and another part of the design presented itself to Will’s mind.

“They weren’t there.”

“Pardon?”

“This second participant, I can’t get a grip on what they were doing because they weren’t doing anything. I mean, they weren’t doing anything because they weren’t there. It was all set up for a presentation, a shared meal, and then I guess they never turned up, so there was no eating to be done and the killer left it untouched.”

“How can you be certain that there is a second person involved at all then?”

“It’s in the presentation. All of this is a showpiece to impress someone, that’s why the design feels unfinished and I can’t properly feel of it. It’s personal but not as personal as it should be.”

“Should we change our re-enactment then, Will?” Hannibal asked, his voice quiet and softened by his accent. “Make it into a what-if scenario for if this intended had been there?”

He nodded, head already half-full of visualisations and possibilities that were flooding his senses, and made his way to the door.

“I arrive at the pre-determined site, I don’t know what lies in store for me but I know the theme,” he said to the white satin-sheened wood.

He turned around, and he could see the body, laid out in state on the table with its eyes open but unseeing and arms tucked by its side; ready for consumption. Hannibal stood to the side, proud and steady with his hands behind him. He approached the incapacitated but breathing body, seeing mouth-watering tidbits spread out, and as he approached Hannibal he held out what his hand him was a pair of the expensive fountain pens Hannibal liked so much, but his mind overrode the instruction and he saw them as delicate chopsticks. 

“Bon appétit,” the killer said to him.

He turned to the desk-table in the easy knowledge that this was not a casual meeting but fancy dinner out, an overly theatrical date of sorts. He imagined plucking a roll of something delicious from off the still heaving chest of the helpless brutal murderer before him.

“I know this man to be evil,” he said to himself. “He is a carbuncle on the face of the planet, now brought down to being table scraps, and I do not pity him. He will be our sustenance, meat and nothing more. He deserves this.”

He didn’t imagine bringing the food to his lips but he could feel how delicious it was, how delicately spiced and seared. Hannibal was across the table from him, his own pen-chopsticks in hand and an indulgent expression on his face. They smile at each other for so long it should be uncomfortable, but Will is having too perfect a time when Hannibal mimes feeding him something tart from the body between him, and it is everything that he could have asked for.

“After we eat we dispose of the waste,” he said aloud, and then the killer was ready, his hand on a ruler posed where the imaginary Urquhart’s throat is. The lover’s hand covers the killer’s and together they apply enough force for a clean incision, all the way through until the tip of the knife lodges in the dark teak of the desk. They don’t watch as the knife cuts through veins and cartilage and bone, instead watching each other intently, letting the powerful rush of the taking of a life and the subtle vibrations of the knife as it scrapes between vertebrae forge the bond between the two of them, binding them far closer than they had ever been before. The knife transmits little shudders to them as the corpse spasms on the last of its energy and they lean in to kiss above it, hands still clasped together on the knife, the taste of their meal lingering on the killer’s tongue and he chases it with his own. 

They break away once the cadaver is still, the killer with a wide smile and a tight hold on the lover’s hand. 

“Delicious,” the lover would have said, licking his lips and enjoying the way the killer’s eyes followed his tongue.

“The kill is as much a courting gift as the meal is, expertly tailored to suit my tastes. It’s not the only carnal offering of the night.” 

He was certain of the decision and the swagger he was affecting, the fantasy holding strong around him, but he lost the thread of how it would proceed for a moment. Then Hannibal was beside him, gently pressing on his shoulder until he took a step back from the table. He pressed his mouth gently to Will’s, far more chaste than the hungry kiss of a moment prior, and Will recognised it as himself rather than the shadowy lover, an imagination of an imagination. He started a little but a look came over Hannibal and he recognised the killer in him again, sinking to his knees before him and raking his eyes up his body to give the lover a half-lidded look full of lust before pressing a hand to the lover’s crotch, already half-hard in his clothes.

It felt right, and the re-enactment re-solidified around it, accepted as truth.

The killer kept their eyes locked as they palmed him, the lover’s gender settling on male as a gelatinous concept, until they fell forward to brace themselves against the dining table and the killer worked to open their zippers and buttons and layers and they were open to the cool air. They were hard from both the act of murdering in tandem and the direct attention, and when a mouth closed over them it was impossible not to buck forward, but a hand at their base held their hips in place as stormy eyes full of warning watched him carefully as their mouth closed over the head of their sex. 

As long fingers stroked the sensitive skin of his shaft, Will found himself increasingly in the role, imagining it was his own member being massaged by this faceless killer that was wearing Dr Lecter for the moment. Thin lips pushed down his length and he moaned loud in the back of his throat as pleasure threatened to drown him; he broke eye contact to catch the eye of the corpse, head still stuck upright by the blade in its neck but eyes rolled round to meet his own. 

He opened his mouth to object but the words were swallowed along with his dick, the tempo increasing, adagio, slender fingers and confident hands on the base of his shaft, down to his sac, applying sweet pressure as he stared into brown eyes that had begun to cloud. He glanced down, the killer below him staring up at him with such zeal that the contrast hit him full force and he shoved a hand down to grab at the long fringe and pull it into moderato. He had power here, dominion over the decider between life and death; had helped take that life himself.

With a careful angling of his torso he reached over the table to trace his finger down the back of the knife, trailed up the sharp edge to feel the bite of it in his skin as he was swallowed entire, the muscles and cartilage that had been so cleanly torn through by the blade now constricting him in rhythmic waves, building to a crescendo as he thumbed the point where the metal met skin, blood congealing to a thick gel where it had bubbled from the wound.

He came hard and fast, feeling the contractions of the killer’s throat working to swallow everything he gave until he was completely emptied out. The killer pulled smoothly off him and in one graceful movement rose to take his mouth in a fierce kiss, hands gripping at his waist and salt taste strong, and when they finally pulled away in place of their tongue he was slipped something savoury and delicately flavoured, spiced as to complement and offset the bitter aftertaste of their kiss.

“Delicious,” the lover says again, and then Will is back to himself in Hannibal’s office, sitting in the chair as though none of it had happened and they had only talked through the case as they so often had before. 

The fantasy still blurred the edges of his mind, the details and conclusions stark in the haze of a dream that could and should have been real. Hannibal was composed and completely un-rumpled with the same calm and self-assured smile as ever. It must have been him imagining; the slightly salty, seasoned taste stayed on the back of his mouth, a hangover from the visualisation. His arms tensed as he prevented himself from patting down his crotch for dampness; Hannibal was sharp, and the more he could keep him away from the more vivid of his delusions the better. He had already said far too much of his lost time and over-empathising, and if he told his psychiatrist he was certain they had just had a tryst over a corpse there was no amount of professional care and personal curiosity that would keep him out of the asylum.

“So did you figure out the motive for this lurid display?” Hannibal asked in a level voice, nothing at all in his expression or tone to give the impression that he had very recently had a dick very far down his throat. Will’s world shifted a fraction closer to reality.

“It was love.”

“Indeed? Well now, that’s a bold statement of affection.” Hannibal crossed his legs, resting his hands on his knees in carefully cultivated dispassion as a smirk crept onto his face by degrees. “Do you think that the message got through, even without the partner there?”

Will felt as though for all that they had made of the case, the most important pieces were still escaping him, skulking just out of reach like the shadow lover.

“I’m not sure,” was the best he could do. “Time will tell.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the beautiful poem Love's Deity https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44120/loves-deity  
also adapted into a beautiful song by Stereo Alchemy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keMWHQI8Nqw


End file.
